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IDALIS IN THE HOUSE

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Idalis, MTV’s newest veejay, is unquestionably hot.

With her rapid-fire delivery, easy colloquial manner and sultry persona, six weeks into the job it’s obvious she’s well-suited to the MTV world.

But getting there wasn’t easy. “It was a six-month audition process.” Idalis thought she was a shoo-in: “I was crazy confident,” she says, “But then I also didn’t care if I didn’t get it. I was so used to, as an actress, to go out on auditions and not get them.”

She was a member of the musical trio Seduction. The band broke up four years ago because of “fighting and egos getting in the way,” she explains.

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“I’ve performed in front of 10,000 people,” she recalls. “I’ve had celebrity thing, I made my mistakes, had my temper tantrums.” Now, she says, in street-speak, “I’m not going to go there” (read: She won’t be acting that way again). Her resume, before and after Seduction, seems typical for acting hopefuls: bartender, hostess, acting classes, part-time actress.

Idalis, 31, who calls herself a “New Yorkican” (that’s a New York-born Puerto Rican), hopes “to keep that Latino stuff alive on MTV! The first segment I did, I was like, ‘Yo!, It’s MTV in the house! I’m a Puerto Rican girl born in the Bronx, raised in Brooklyn!’ ” She hopes to inspire. “When I was growing up, I had no role models at all. I kept wondering why my mom didn’t look like Florence Henderson.”

She lived in the projects until she was 10, when “my mother married a Jewish man and we moved into an Italian neighborhood. I’m diverse. I’ve met so many people, who’ve brought me to so many different places, my heart is international.” All of these elements, she says, help her relate to the MTV audience.

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